The “bear necessities” evidently include freshly caught salmon.
Bears have a dozen different options for obtaining food, and one of their favorites methods is to find a good fishing spot and settle in. I guess that’s one thing us humans and bears have in common?
What is interesting about a bear’s ability to fish is that they’re actually quite skilled at the practice, and they rarely throw the fish back after they get a hold of them. Their usual way of going about things is to catch-and-immediately-eat method, like the bear in this video does.
In the past, you may have seen the slightly terrifying footage of a grizzly bear skinning a salmon while it was still alive. “Slightly terrifying” might not be giving it enough credit, because it truly is a gnarly moment of nature.
With this video below, we don’t know if the salmon is still alive as the bear peels back on the fish. We’re hoping that the bruin put the big sockeye out of its misery prior to chowing down on it, but I unfortunately cannot promise anything there.
All we do know is that this bear made short work of removing the fish’s skin after it “reeled it in,” and I’m guessing that the bruin has done this 1,000 times before. After all, bears are known for eating up to 30 fish a day, and a bear in the “Fat Bear Week” contest famously ate 42 salmon in one sitting.
I need to know this bear’s secret, because I’ve spent a ton of time trying to get the skin off of the salmon I bought at the grocery store (and I’m usually armed with tools). The bear in this clip got the skin off, munched on it as somewhat of an appetizer, and then dove right into the meat of the salmon in a matter of seconds.
And let this be a lesson of “sharing is caring,” because the bear happily shared some of the salmon it had caught with another bruin that swam up. I also like that they didn’t even bother to get out of the water to dig into the fish, probably due to the fact that they were going to get right back to fishing after they finished scarfing down their catch.
Take a look:
